Wait, what? So if you’re rude to somebody, and then they die, your rudeness was forgivable for a while but at the moment of their death your past rudeness suddenly becomes unforgiveable? Not unforgiven - unforgiveable?
(And isn’t it possible to forgive somebody for committing suicide, even if they don’t know you did?)
I think you’re 'splodeying my head.
Would they have a right to steal, rape, embezzle, psychologically abuse, gamble away the rent money, and steal possessions to support a drug habit, if they managed to apologize afterwards before either party died?
And there’s a lot more ways of inflicting “pain either financial, physical or emotional on other people” than that. For example: I’m an atheist. It bothers my mother, rather a lot. Does this mean I don’t have the right to be an atheist? Suppose for a moment I’m not going to apologize.
I think maybe we’re operating under a different definition of a “right” then. You seem to be equating “right” with “morally correct” or “nice”. Certainly committing suicide isn’t a nice thing to do to the people you leave behind, and may be the morally incorrect choice. Just because you shouldn’t do it doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to do it, though.
Most people would agree that it’s morally repugnant to advocate, for example, that blacks or Asians or Jews are inferior races. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have the right to say it, because there is a right of free speech. Just because I shouldn’t doesn’t mean I don’t have the right to.
Yes. That’s my viewpoint, of course. I’m aware that others see things differently.
On the other hand, a brief rudeness is on a very different scale than killing yourself.
In my case… no. If you commit suicide I will not forgive you. Ever. I might understand why you murdered yourself, but that doesn’t mean I’ll agree with your reasons or think it’s OK or forgive you.
Nope. You don’t ever have a right to do any of those things. Apologizing/making amends repairs some of the damage you do, but it does not undo it. Just because you ask forgiveness does not mean you will get it.
No, I believe you have the right to believe how you believe. While your mother is pained by that, you are also pained by her intolerance of your beliefs. That’s a fairly normal human conflict.
Suicide, however, involves taking a human life. That’s a different sort of serious. It’s murder. Granted, it’s a person murdering himself, but that doesn’t suddenly make it OK or a “right” of some sort.
Right now I’m studying a course that involves some clinical neuroscience, and it can be quite disturbing because even though most of us casually accept that the brain is responsible for our personality and actions it’s still a shock to see this directly demonstrated.
For one thing depression is often caused by physical or chemical faults within the brain.
A presentation I recently attended showed how when performing Deep Brain Stimulation it’s possible to accidentally make a patient suicidally depressed by being a couple of mm out on the target region the brain (incidentally, the whole point of DBS is that any such mistakes are reversible).
So, given that we expect variation among phenotypes, I’d expect different people are differently predisposed towards suicide, and it may not even matter much how objectively “good” their lives are.
Unless we’re talking past one another, you are saying that it’s not the act that makes something immoral at all - it’s whether you can be forgiven for doing it. If the same past act has different “morality levels” dependent on the entirely unrelated issue of which parties are alive at the time of the morality assessment, then that takes ‘subjective morality’ to an unprecedented new level.
You could say the same thing about rudeness, were you sufficiently offendable. In either case, you’re making the morality of the act dependent on the sensitivities of the third party - which (absent mind reading) the person committing the act cannot know with certainty. This seems like a dodgy way to construct a code of morality - nothing is moral, because you somebody might be offended by it (and might suddenly die), and you cannot know whether or not they’ll forgive you.
What if you would get it?
What makes murder special here? Usually the difference is that you’re robbing somebody of the rest of their life - but you can’t steal something that’s already yours. A person has the right to waste their life, right? A person has the right to cut off contact with others, right? Suicide is merely doing both of those things at once, give or take the question of who has to do the cleanup, which is arguably an act of rudeness if you leave a mess for somebody. But I doubt that that rudeness is what you’re worried about.
I am 14 months past my brother’s suicide. He shot himself 9 days before Christmas 2008, leaving his wife with three small children, pregnant with a fourth.
I know Judy Collins isn’t reading this thread, but I want my heartfelt sympathy for her on record. It’s heartbreaking to lose a child under any circumstances and I know from watching my parents it’s really hard not to take the suicide of a child as a commentary on one’s parenting (which it certainly wasn’t in my parents’ case)
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Don’t look at the way people die, even in cases of suicide. Look at the way they lived.**
This implies we have to judge the person, their life and their death. I see no need for this.
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2. We have to respect he right of adults to decide to commit suicide.**
Nope, don’t agree. If I woke up and it was the morning of Dec. 16, 2008 I would get to my brother’s house and do anything I had to do to get him out of the house and to the hospital and take away his personal freedom as much as I had to get him treated. I admit I might not feel quite so strongly about this if 4 children weren’t left fatherless by his suicide. I am also fairly certain that whatever was so clouding my brother’s judgment WAS treatable.
For cases of the elderly and those in intractable pain with no dependents, I guess I can see a case for not interfering in their plans for suicide.
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3. Some people are simply fated to die by their own hands.**
I don’t believe anybody’s “fated” for anything. I think of my brother’s suicide as a terrible accident, a terrible collision of bad brain chemicals and stressful circumstance along with the opportunity that a gun offered.
My heart goes out to everybody in this thread touched by suicide
Suicide is Murder. It is self-murder, but murder just the same. The issues that people have to deal with when someone kills themself unexpectedly must be very similar to the feelings of having a loved one killed by someone else.
The issue of assisted suicide for a terminally ill person, in cooperation with their families, is a different matter. But even then, time will solve the problem better than human decisions.
I would say there are people that our system cant easily help, ie where they dont qualify for standard depression or other relevant diagnoses, but are clearly at high risk at some time in the future of killing themselves - might be a week, might be a year. Short of locking them in a room under supervision for the rest of their lives there arent always easy options. I suspect this kind of situation is whats being talked about. Or the ones where there were no obvious signs other than in hindsight.
Unfortunately there are many cases where the ‘at risk’ group is so large that you cant easily intervene for the smaller percentage that will actually attempt suicide.
But thats no more ‘fate’ than someone dying of cancer a hundred years ago who can easily be helped now. We just dont have all the answers.
There are (at least) two sets of “effects” of a murder: loss to the person killed, and loss to their friends and family and other associates. I draw a difference between suicide and murder because I don’t consider the first set of losses insignificant.
I should think if I was old, living all alone in a room, got a diagnosis of cancer, and had no one in the world who cared about me and wanted to end it all…I think that tragedy would outweigh the inconvenience of having to have The Sunshine Cleaning Co. come and remove my remains. After all, I’m providing honest employment for someone and I don’t have to take up valuable space and resources in this world any more.
People who have clinical depression often have distorted views of reality. They can feel totally hopeless and not even realize that they don’t have a rational reason to feel that way.
They may feel that no one cares about them; life is boring and will always be that way; just living day to day takes too much energy; there is no point in living, etc.
They have these thoughts while feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness. No wonder they might want to take their own lives.
What they are thinking and feeling are not reflecting what’s really going on in their lives. But the depressed person doesn’t know that! That’s why I wouldn’t just stand back and say, “Well, go ahead. It’s your right.”
I, too, would do everything to get that person help. And I certainly wouldn’t have any firearms around the house if that person lived with me. (Suicide is sometimes very impulsive.) If there was no relief to be found after a year’s time, I might feel differently. Mental anguish is horrible.
If a person was in great physical pain, that is a different matter altogether.
I have read that suicide may run in families not just because depression does, but because the “solution” seems more viable once someone you love has used it. Guard against that.
What is the case for the elderly? Why are we so irrelevant? The elderly get clinical depression a lot. It can be dealt with for them too! I know three women in their 90s who are more active and sassy than I. One just came out with a book this month about her father’s art work.
Carlotta, I am very sorry about your brother’s death. I just can’t imagine what you must be feeling.
I agree wholeheartedly with point 1 in the OP, although I understand if this is very hard to do. Especially if a suicide comes completely from left field it can be hard getting past that point where the cause of death defines the person more than his life.
I also agree with point 2. Everybody has the right to do with their life as they will. Including ending it. I also don’t see where Broomstick comes from at all. Are you saying that there is a difference between a suicide and someone pack up and leave and never let himself heard again? What if I decide to move to a remote island and not let my family know where I went and never get back in touch with them. As far as they know I might as well be dead, but I did not kill myself. This would be more acceptable to you? And if this is the same, might I not just safe myself the trip and let my family inherit those last few dollars I saved for airfare?
On point 3. I do understand where she comes from. Some people are so clinically depressed that there are only two options: medicate them to the point where they lose their identity, or kill themselves. I do believe that for those people there is only one way forward and maybe that is what she meant by ‘fated’.
I don’t think some people are fated to commit suicide. Most people that I have known that committed suicide were the last people I ever expected would kill themselves. I have also known many people that at one time or another were suicidal but never had the guts to follow through.
Example one, My brother in Law. He has a wife and a good job and a nice home. He has a pet Goat and a model T and he enjoys driving around town with his goat. He is a funny guy and seemingly happy. He goes out to the shed one day and blows his head off. No note.
Example two. A man at work punches in and doesn’t punch out. We find him hanging in an out building. He is only 27 years old. no note.
Example three. A popular young man is building a house for his fiancé. He has a good job and lots of friends. One day he goes home and blows his brains out. His best friend finds a note taped to his door to come and call an ambulance so his fiancé and family don’t find him.
There are more but these are just a few of the suicides I know about. I know about some where the person had something wrong that made them decide to end their lives. These though are truly baffling to me. They are unplanned and seem to be spur of the moment. No depression or financial problems.
I think you’re being delibrately obtuse with that. Of course, the damage done also figures greatly into the morality/immorality of an act. Minor damage - such a rudeness - is in a whole different league than permant, irrevocable damage such as maiming or killing someone.
Oh, please - some things we know without question are damaging, such as rape, theft, and murder and don’t require mind reading. Verbal rudeness is a different matter, but yes, different people are vulnerable in different ways. You can unintentionally hurt someone - that doesn’t mean it’s OK you hurt them, and in that case the damage is subjective and determined by the harmed party.
No, you do not have an absolute right to “waste” your life or runaway from your life. If, instead, of killing yourself, you run away from your responsibilities but are still alive the legal system may well track you down and force you to relocate, contribute money where required, and otherwise force you back into contact with others. A prime example of this is child support: if you are deemed legally obligated to provide this then no, you can’t just run away and if you do you can be compelled return to court, have your wages garnished, or be locked up against your will. That’s the example that comes most readily to mind, but this notion of absolute freedom does not exist in this world.
This always grates me. How do you know? Speaking from experience, a depression is not something that is usually noticed by bystanders, even close relatives or SOs. It’s far more insidious than that. The fact that this guy committed suicide clearly demonstrates that there was something going on in his life, even if you didn’t notice it.
Fated, cosmically or genetically? Comically, I think not, but there may be genetic factors in play concerning severe depression. The question made me think of the Hemingway family: Not only did famed author Ernest kill himself, but his father, sister, brother, and granddaughter Margaux committed suicide as well. Not all the Hemingways were “destined” for suicide, as actress Mariel Hemingway is still alive and kicking, but the family may have a high instance of suicidal tendencies that is genetically passed down.
But when I think of one cosmically fated for suicide, I think of Judas Iscariot. If we take the New Testament at face value, there would have been no Resurrection, and therefore no Christianity, if Judas did not get the ball rolling for thirty pieces of silver.
I’m trying to help you sort out that there are two separate kinds of harm here - actual damage done to a victimized party, and bothering the bystanders. With a suicide, the first kind of damage doesn’t happen, because it’s (obviously) consensual. Which means that the question becomes “does the family being bothered trump the indivudual’s right to make personal decisions about their own life?” At which point, we’re talking about whether I should be allowed to be an atheist or not. Being an atheist isn’t as hard on me as committing suicide, but the level of damage done there is irrelevent because I am doing it to myself (or would be).
The simple fact here is that you think that being an ath, er, committing suicide is so rude to the family, that that rudeness trumps the individual’s right to make a decision about their own life. I disagree, absent other considerations.
Now, you could cook the situation some to your favor. If the person in question was the sole supporter of fifteen children, who would be scattered to the winds of the foster care system on his death, then he has an increased responsibility to them. If they’ll be fed into a woodchipper if he commits suicide, then he has an even greater responsibility to stay alive. But if he’s like me, with no dependents? Personally I choose to avoid death as long as my mother is alive, but I feel no compulsions to outlive my siblings. If I felt I had a reason to die they would not alone be a reason to stay alive.
Making a legal argument for a moral question? Lame. Why don’t you just argue “suicide is illegal, so you can’t do it - QED!”? If one argument is valid so’s the other.
